


^Pl^A^U. ,^3 



Hollinger Corp. 
P H8.5 



SPEECH 



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J * ■ ■ 

HON. JOHN M* KEAD, 



POWER OF CONGRESS OVER THE TERRITORIES 




AND IN FAVOK OF 



FREE KANSAS, FREE WHITE LABOR, 



FREMONT AND DAYTON. 



DELIVERED ON 



PHILADELPHIA. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

PRINTED BY C. SHERMAN & SON. 

1856. 



V* 






SPEECH OF HON. JOHN M. READ 



Fellow Citizens : — Was the Missouri Compromise constitu- 
tional ? Was its nullification a breach of national faith and a 
violation of national honor ? Is not its restoration called for by 
the truest interests of humanity and freedom ? Shall Kansas be 
slave or free ? 

These are the true issues involved in our coming elections, and 
can there be a doubt that the people of Pennsylvania will enlist 
in the great army of freedom to carry free soil, free speech, a 
free press, and free labor into invaded and subjugated Kansas ? 
No man can speak, write, or even think his true opinions upon 
the subject of slavery in Kansas as it is now governed, by laws 
made by a legislature, elected not by the resident voters of Kan- 
sas, but by an army of Border Ruffians from Missouri, and sup- 
ported by the President and Army of the United States, whose 
bayonets are used to stab freedom to the heart. 

These questions, the greatest that have occurred since the 
formation of the Constitution, should be t discussed calmly, and 
temperately, our object being to convince all dispassionate men 
of all parties that we are right. 

We have on our side, the Constitution and its uniform con- 
struction by its framers, the patriots and sages of the Revolution 
— by the father of his country — by the author of the Declaration 
of Independence — and by all the Constitutional lawyers and 
statesmen of the Union. The proof of this is to be found in the 
history of the Constitution, of the Ordinance of 1787, of the 
Compromise of 1820, and of the uniform practice under them 
by all departments of the government. 



It is hardly necessary to say that all our revolutionary patriots 
were in favor of freedom, and opposed to slavery as " a great 
political and moral evil." Mr. Jefferson looked forward to a 
gradual emancipation in the States by State authority. " I 
think," said he, " a change is already perceptible since the origin 
of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, 
that of the slave is rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, 
the way, I hope, preparing, under the auspices of Heaven, for a 
total emancipation, and that this is disposed in the order of 
events to be with the consent of the masters rather than by their 
extirpation." 

The Articles of Confederation were signed by New Jersey, 
Delaware, and Maryland, with great hesitation, and by the last 
not until Congress had requested, and two States had actually 
ceded their claims to Western Territory for the benefit of the 
United States. 

The resolution of the 10th of October, 1780, contemplated 
the disposal by Congress of the unappropriated lands ceded to 
the United States, and their settlement and formation into dis- 
tinct republican States. The several cessions were made in due 
form by the States of New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, and 
Connecticut. The claims of these States were founded originally 
on the terms of their respective charters, and included not only 
the soil and the right of pre-emption but as complete a jurisdic- 
tion and right of sovereignty over the Territory and its inhabi- 
tants, as if it had been in the most densely populated part of 
their Atlantic possessions. 

When, therefore, these States, and particularly Virginia, 
executed their deeds of cession, they parted with the soil, the 
right of pre-emption, and the sovereignty or jurisdiction, which 
they claimed to exercise within their charter limits, and the 
whole vested in the United States of America. No one could 
sell the lands, or govern the people in those Territories, but their 
recognized organ, the Congress of the Confederation, and we 
accordingly find that both objects were separately the subjects 
of distinct Congressional legislation. 

The government of the people was the first object, and the 
preparation of the ceded Territories for their erection into Re- 



publican States, which should become sovereign members of the 
Confederacy. Accordingly, on the 19th of April, 1784, Congress 
took into consideration the report of a committee, consisting of 
Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Chase, and Mr. Howell, to whom was re- 
committed their report of a plan for the temporary government 
of the Western Territory. A motion was made by Mr. Spaight, 
of North Carolina, seconded by a delegate from South Carolina, 
to strike out this paragraph : 

" That, after the year 1800, of the Christian era, there shall 
be neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude, in any of the 
said States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, ivhereof the 
party shall have been convicted to have been personally guilty. ," 

It was struck out ; all the States north of Mason and Dixon's 
line voting for it, as well as Mr. Jefferson, and Mr. Williamson (of 
North Carolina). After some other amendments, the Resolution 
was adopted on the 23d of April. This Report, and particularly 
this provision against the existence of Slavery in the new States, 
was understood to be the production of Mr. Jefferson. 

This Resolution provided for the temporary government of the 
Northwestern Territory, and prescribed the size of the States 
and the time and manner of their admission, and the principles 
upon which both the temporary and permanent governments 
should be established. It is clear that neither Mr. Jefferson, 
nor any member of that Congress, doubted the power of that 
body to acquire territory and to legislate for it and its peo- 
ple, by providing, first, a temporary government, and, second- 
ly, for the future formation of independent sovereign States, 
which should be admitted into the Confederacy ; and, still fur- 
ther, it is equally clear, that Mr. Jefferson, and a real majority 
of the States, included the power to prohibit Slavery, as within 
their legitimate authority. Congress, having thus provided a 
plan for the temporary and permanent government of the Ter- 
ritory, next directed their attention to the sale of the public 
lands within it, to which the Indian titles had been extinguished. 

On the 7th May, 1784, a Committee, of which Mr. Jefferson 
(who had been the chairman of the Committee on the Plan for 
the Government of the Territories) was chairman, reported "An 
ordinance for ascertaining the mode of locating and disposing of 



lands in the Western Territory, and for other purposes therein 
mentioned." This ordinance, as amended, passed on the 20th 
May, 1785, and formed the groundwork of the present land laws 
of the United States. 

The Congress of the Confederation, therefore, exercised sepa- 
rately the two distinct branches of their sovereign power over 
the "Western Territory. 1st. By organizing governments for the 
people. 2d. By adopting a plan or ordinance for disposing of 
the lands in said territory. 

It was, however, deemed expedient to repeal the Resolve of 
the 23d April, 1784, which was accordingly done by Congress, 
who, on the 13th July, 1787, passed the celebrated ordinance 
for the Government of the Territory of the United States north- 
west of the river Ohio. 

It regulated the descent of intestate estates in the territory, 
and also devises by will and the conveyance of real estate, with 
the mode of proof, acknowledgment, and record, and established 
also the transfer of personal property by delivery, saving to the 
French and Canadian inhabitants and other settlers of the Kas- 
kaskias, Saint Vincents, and the neighboring villages, who had 
theretofore professed themselves citizens of Virginia, their laws 
and customs then in force relative to the descent and conveyance 
of property. 

It then gave a temporary government to the Territory or Dis- 
trict, consisting of a Governor, Secretary, and three Judges, 
the Governor and Judges being invested with legislative power 
until the organization of a General Assembly, which was to con- 
sist of the Governor, a Legislative Council, appointed by Con- 
gress from the nominations made by the Representatives, and a 
House of Representatives, which Council and House were autho- 
rized, by joint ballot, to elect a Delegate to Congress, who was 
to have a seat with the right of debating, but not of voting, during 
this temporary government. 

The second or permanent part of the ordinance established 
the principles in the shape of articles, which were six in number, 
by which both the temporary and permanent governments should 
be forever regulated, and provided for the formation of not less 
than three, nor more than five, States in the Territory, and their 



admission into the Union ; provided, the constitution and govern- 
ment to be formed by such States should be Republican, and in 
conformity to the principles contained in the said articles. 

The sixth of these articles, which applied expressly to the 
territory, whether under the temporary or permanent form of 
government, declared the freedom of the soil by prohibiting for- 
ever the existence of slavery within this favored region — a pro- 
vision which was merely an enlargement of Mr. Jefferson's 
favorite proposition in the Congress of 1784. 

This article, which is one of those declared to be unalterable, 
except by common consent, is in these words : 

"There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in 
the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, 
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted ; provided 
always, that any person escaping into the same, from whom 
labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original 
States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed 
to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid." 

This ordinance had been the subject of discussion in Congress 
ten months before its adoption. Mr. Gorham, Mr. King, Mr. 
Madison, and Mr. Butler, who were members of the Federal Con- 
vention, were also delegates in the Congress which sat in New 
York. Mr. Madison was present in Congress whilst this ordi- 
nance was on second reading, and we find his name on the 
Journal, on the 22d April, 1787, and on the next day he wrote 
a letter to Mr. Jefferson, from New York, in which he says, 
" the present deliberations of Congress turn on, first, the sale of 
the Western lands ; secondly, the government of the Western 
settlements within the Federal domain." 

On the 9th May, Congress proceeded in the second reading of 
the Ordinance, and it was ordered to be transcribed, and the 
next day was assigned for a third reading. On the 10th May, 
when it came up in order, it was postponed. Messrs. Gorham and 
King were then present, and voting, as appears by the Journal. 
From the 11th May to the 6th July, Congress only met and 
adjourned, there not being a quorum ; and on the 11th July, 
the Committee to whom it had been referred, reported the Orcli- 



8 

nance, and it was read a first time on the 12th, and a third time 
on the 13tb. 

The passage of this Ordinance is mentioned in the Pennsyl- 
vania Packet of the 21st July, 1787, published in Philadelphia, 
by John Dunlap and David G. Claypoole, and the whole appeared 
at length in the August number of Matthew Carey's American 
Museum for that year. 

The Federal Convention adjourned on the 26th July until 
Monday, the 6th August, and on Thursday, the 2d August, Mr. 
Pierce Butler appeared in Congress, in New York, and produced 
his credentials as a delegate from South Carolina. 

On the 28th August, in the Federal Convention, Mr. Butler 
and Mr. Pinckney moved, to require fugitive slaves and servants 
to be delivered up like criminals. This was opposed, because it 
would oblige the Executives of the States to do it at the public 
expense, and the proposition was withdrawn. On the next day 
Mr. Butler moved a proposition which was evidently taken from 
the sixth article of the Ordinance of the 13th July, and which 
in more compact phraseology forms the third clause of the second 
section of the fourth article of the Constitution. 

After the adjournment of the Convention on the 17th Sep- 
tember, Mr. Gorham, Mr. King, Mr. Butler, and Mr. Madison, 
took their seats again in Congress, at New York, and we find the 
names of the three first named gentlemen on the Journal, on the 
24th September, and on the next day that of Mr. Madison also, 
who, on the 30th, wrote to General Washington respecting the 
feelings of Congress, and of the people, in relation to the act of 
the Convention. On the 5th of October, General St. Clair was 
elected Governor, and Winthrop Sargent Secretary of the North- 
western Territory. 

By a convention between the States of South Carolina and 
Georgia, concluded at Beaufort, on the 28th of April, 1787, 
South Carolina ceded to the State of Georgia, all the right, title, 
and claim, which the said State of South Carolina had to the 
government, sovereignty, and jurisdiction in and over the lands, 
west of the most northern branch of the Tugaloo River, and also 
the right of pre-emption of the soil from the native Indians, and 
all other the estate, property, and claim which the £tate of South 



9 

Carolina had in or to the said lands, and on the 9th August, in 
the same year, made a cession of soil and jurisdiction to the 
United States, of what was apparently already ceded to Georgia. 
At the time therefore of framing the Constitution, the settled 
policy of the United States was clearly and distinctly defined and 
known to all the members of the Federal Convention. It was — 

1. To dispose of the public lands ; this was the subject of a 
separate system, which has always been kept by itself, and forms 
the business of a distinct department of the Government. 

2. To legislate for and to form temporary or Territorial Go- 
vernments, for the Territory belonging to the United States. 

3. To provide for the admission of new States. 

All these powers had been exercised, without question, by Con- 
gress, and we have the highest authority for saying, that the 
power of acquiring territory, necessarily brings with it the power 
of legislation. Whilst in its territorial form it does not appear 
to have been doubted that such a power would exist without any 
positive provision in the Constitution. 

A provision was therefore made for the admission of the new 
States, but in the original report the Territories were entirely 
omitted. 

Upon a suggestion, however, of Mr. Carroll of Maryland, who 
was afraid that the claims of the United States to the Western 
Territory might be denied, if not mentioned in the Constitution, 
that which now forms the second clause of the third section of 
the fourth article was adopted. 

The whole third section refers 1. To the admission of new 
States. 2. To the disposal of the public lands, which is included 
in the words, " The Congress shall have power to dispose of the 
Territory, or other property belonging to the United States," the 
words being the same as those used in the Land Ordinance of the 
20th May, 1785, which says, The Territory ceded " shall be dis- 
posed of in the following manner." 3. To the legislation for the 
temporary government of the Territories which are provided for 
in the words " Congress shall have power to make all needful 
rules and regulations respecting the Territory or other property 
belonging to the United States," using the word Territory in its 
largest sense as understood in the Deeds of Cession and in the 



10 

Ordinance of 13th July, 1787. This means Jurisdiction and 
Sovereignty, and confers upon or recognizes in Congress the same 
power that had been exercised by the old Congress. 

This is made more evident when we refer to the concluding 
words in this clause, "and nothing in this constitution shall be so 
construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States or of 
any particular States." Now this means neither more nor less 
than the claims of either to the jurisdiction, soil, and sovereignty 
of the Western country. 

The word Territory, in its largest sense, includes lands, soil, 
jurisdiction, and sovereignty, and as the power to sell includes 
the lesser power to mortgage, so the power to dispose of territory, 
supposing it used in its most extended meaning, includes the 
power to sell the public lands agreeably to the present system, 
which commenced before the adoption of the Constitution. 

The cession of Virginia included in it Lake Michigan, an in- 
land sea, half of Lake Erie, Huron, and Superior, and a tract of 
country equal to many of the kingdoms of the old world. How 
absurd, then, is it at this day to apply to a constitution for an 
empire, a construction which would be rejected, not simply by 
statesmen of enlarged intellect, but by the humblest lawyer that 
ever practised before a justice of the peace. 

The words " territory and territories," — as used in the original 
charters of the various Colonies, in the public documents preced- 
ing and succeeding the Articles of Confederation, in the cessions 
from the various States, and in the contemporaneous legislation 
of the old Congress, — included soil, land, and water jurisdiction, 
domain, and sovereignty. The same meaning has been attached 
to them in our treaties with foreign powers, in the Acts of Con- 
gress, and even in the celebrated Resolution for the conditional 
admission of Texas, and in some cases they have been used to 
designate the whole of the United States, whether States or 
Territories. 

The original title to a new country is founded on the right of 
discovery, and it confers upon the nation discovering it the sove- 
reignty and jurisdiction, with the right of pre-emption of the 
soil from its aboriginal inhabitants. This right belongs to it in 
its sovereign capacity, which enables it to extinguish the Indian 



11 

title, and to perfect its dominion over the soil, and dispose of it 
according to its own good pleasure. 

In the new Territories, therefore, of America, discovery and 
the purchase of the Indian title, vested in the Government the 
soil, jurisdiction, and sovereignty of the country, and, of course, 
of its inhabitants. 

In the second charter of Virginia, in 1609, the words used, 
are " lands, countries, and territories," and in the second charter 
of Carolina, in 1677, the grant is of " all that province, territo- 
ry, or tract of land," and "together with all and singular the 
ports, harbors, bays, rivers, and inlets, belonging unto the Pro- 
vince or Territory aforesaid ;" and in the charter of the Province 
of Massachusetts, of 1691, the w T ords Province and Territory are 
used as synonymous, and, in speaking of it, it is called by Wil- 
liam and Mary " our said Province or Territory." 

In the Georgia charter, in 1732, the grant was of " all those 
lands, countries, and territories;" and the 7th article of the de- 
finitive Treaty of Peace between Great Britain, France, and 
Spain, concluded at Paris on the 10th of February, 1763, speaks 
of " the limits of the British and French Territories on the Con- 
tinent of America," which are irrevocably fixed by that treaty. 

By the 9th of the Articles of Confederation, federal courts were 
directed to be constituted to settle disputes between two or more 
States, concerning boundary, jurisdiction, or any other cause 
whatever ; each judge of such courts was to be sworn, and it 
was provided, that " no State shall be deprived of territory for 
the benefit of the United States" All controversies, concerning 
the private right of soil, claimed under different grants of two or 
more States, whose jurisdiction, as they may respect such lands, 
had been adjusted, were to be finally determined, as near as 
might be, in the same manner as was prescribed for deciding 
disputes concerning Territorial jurisdiction between different 
States. 

In the provisional articles of Peace of the 30th of November, 
1782, the King of Great Britain acknowledged the independence 
of the United States, and relinquished all claims to the Govern- 
ment, propriety, and Territorial rights of the same, and every 
part thereof. 



12 

In Jay's Treaty, in the 9th article, the words " Territories of 
the United States," are used in the largest sense, comprehending 
both States and Territories ; as also in the 14th article, "which 
secures a reciprocal and perfect liberty of navigation and com- 
merce between all the dominions of the King of Great Britain 
in Europe and the Territories of the United States. 

The 15th and 16th Articles use the word territories in the 
same extensive sense, and the 13th relates to the admission of 
American vessels into the ports and harbors of the " British 
territories in the East Indies." 

The same extended meaning of territory and territories is to 
be found in the laws and in other treaties of the United States, 
as in the Louisiana treaty, by which France ceded to the United 
States, " forever and in full sovereignty" the Territory of 
Louisiana ; in the treaty of Ghent, and in the Convention of 1815, 
"to regulate the commerce between the territories of the United 
States and of his Britannic Majesty;" in the Convention with Great 
Britain of 20th October, 1818, which left open for ten years the 
country west of the Stony Mountains, to the vessels, citizens, and 
subjects of the two powers ; in the treaty of 1819, by which 
the King of Spain ceded to the United States, the territories of 
East and West Florida, and all his right to the territories east 
and north of a line fixed by the treaty, and by which we ceded 
the Territory of Texas to Spain — in the 8th section of the Mis- 
souri Act of 1820 ; and in the Convention with Great Britain, of 
the 6th August, 1827, " with respect to the territory on the 
northwest coast of America, west of the Stony or Rocky Moun- 
tains;" in the Convention between the United States and the 
Republic of Texas, of the 25th April, 1838 ; in the treaty 
with Great Britain, of the 9th August, 1842 ; in the joint reso- 
lutions for annexing Texas to the United States ; and lastly, in 
the celebrated treaty of the 15th June, 1846, which was to ter- 
minate " the state of doubt and uncertainty which had hitherto 
prevailed respecting the sovereignty and government of the ter- 
ritory on the northwest coast of America, lying westward of the 
Rocky or Stony Mountains." 

So the words " rules and regulations" in the language of that 
day, included all ordinary acts of legislation, as well as the 



13 

framing of temporary governments for the people of the territo- 
ries. How much has there been done for the prosperity and 
happiness of our beloved country under the words, " Congress 
shall have power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and 
among the several States and with the Indian tribes." 

This power to make needful rules and regulations was to be 
carried into execution by Congress agreeably to the first article 
of the Constitution. 

It is clear that the legislative body of the United States, the 
Congress, has the power to govern the territories, either directly 
or by the intervention of a territorial form of government, 
whether that be of the first or second grade, and this depends 
not only upon necessity but upon the express terms of the Con- 
stitution, which leaves not a shadow of doubt upon the subject. 
Over the territories within the limits of the Constitution the 
power of Congress is supreme, and all territorial legislation is 
subordinate to it. The territories belong to the United States, 
and its supreme legislature, the Congress, has no restrictions 
upon the legislation, and it can and it has, whenever it 'pleased, 
prohibited slavery, which is a mere municipal institution, within 
their borders. What other legislative body has any power 
within their limits ? Certainly not the Legislature of any State, 
for the present Territories, which are all west of the Mississippi, 
never belonged to any State in the Union, but are all acquisi- 
tions from foreign powers. If the Legislature of one State has 
such power, then the Legislatures of all the other States have the 
same power, and, of course, the Territories would -be subjected 
to the disjointed legislation of sixteen free and fifteen slave 
States. This is too gross an absurdity to need refutation, and 
it is equally absurd to say that each man carries with him the 
laws of his own State, for that would be giving to a citizen a 
power which is denied to the Legislature of his State, and to the 
State itself. 

These positions are entirely supported by the whole legislation 
of Congress from 1789 to the Nebraska-Kansas Act. On the 
7th August, 1789, Congress passed an act to provide for the 
government of the territory northwest of the River Ohio, which, 



14 

after reciting that in order that the Ordinance of the United 
States in Congress assembled, for the government of the territory 
northwest of the River Ohio, may continue to have full effect, it 
is requisite that certain provisions should be made, so as to adapt 
the same to the present Constitution of the United States, enacted 
that all communications which were directed to be made by the 
Governor to Congress or their officers, should be made to the 
President, and that the officers which, by the ordinance, were to 
be appointed by Congress, should be appointed by the President, 
by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and in cases 
where the United States in Congress assembled might, by the 
ordinance, revoke any commission or remove from any office, the 
President was to have the same powers of revocation and re- 
moval ; and in the case of the death, removal, resignation, or neces- 
sary absence of the Governor, the Secretary was to perform all his 
duties during the vacancy. This act was necessary in order to 
transfer the Executive powers, which had been exercised by the 
Congress of the Confederation, to the Chief Magistrate, to whom 
they were confided by the new Constitution. This is a clear, 
unqualified recognition and ratification of the Ordinance in its 
double character of a law and a compact, and was made by a 
Congress of which Mr. Madison and other delegates in the late 
federal Convention were members. 

The Constitution of the United States has not the word slave 
in it — our ancestors would have been ashamed to send it down to 
posterity as a slave document, and there are but five places in 
the Constitution in which there is any allusion to this class of 
persons. 

1. In the third clause of the second section of the first article, 
" Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among 
the several States which may be included in this Union according 
to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding 
to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to 
service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, 
three-fifths of all other persons." 

2. In the first clause of the ninth section of the first article, 
which is obsolete, " The migration or importation of such persons 
as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit 



15 

shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one 
thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be im- 
posed on such importation not exceeding ten dollars for each 
person.'" 

3. The fourth clause of the same section — " No capitation or 
other direct tax shall be laid unless in proportion to the census 
or enumeration hereinbefore directed to be taken," referring to 
the third clause of the second. section already quoted. 

4. The third clause of the second section of the fourth article — 
" No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws 
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law 
or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, 
but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such 
service or labor may be due." 

5. The fifth article relates to amendments, and has a proviso 
which is now obsolete — " Provided that no amendment which may 
be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, 
shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the 
ninth section of the first article." 

The 2d and 5th of these paragraphs are obsolete, but in all 
and every of them slaves are spoken of as persons, not things, 
as human beings, and not as chattels or property. The first re- 
lates to the census and enumeration, for representatives and 
direct taxation, and they are expressly called persons, are num- 
bered and classed as a part of the population of the United States, 
and are so counted and considered, in relation to the other nations 
of the world. For the purposes only of representation and direct 
taxation, having no voice in electing the one, or in laying the 
other, they are rated at 5 to 3, in order to reduce the power of 
the actual voters in those States where they exist by force of muni- 
cipal law only. The 3d paragraph is inserted from a wise caution, 
for if a capitation or poll tax had been laid without this special 
reference of it to the representative numbers, it would have been 
imposed upon each head of the whole population, whether white 
or black, slave or free, as a direct tax means, a tax assessed on 
real estate, as houses and lands. 

The 4th paragraph, which has been the subject of so much 
controversy, is clear upon this point. The fugitives from labor 
are called and treated as persons only, and this provision has 



16 

been held to apply to white apprentices and other persons, who 
are not called slaves, in any of the States of the Union. 

It is clear, then, that the Constitution imposes no limit upon 
the power of Congress over slavery in the Territories, or in the 
District of Columbia, in which last, it is expressly empowered 
" to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever." 

But there have been repeated recognitions of the validity of 
the Ordinance of 1787, since the adoption of the Constitution, 
and every new State within the original limits of the United 
States, with the exception of Vermont and Kentucky, has been 
admitted by virtue and in pursuance of its provisions. 

The cession by North Carolina of her Territory west of the 
mountains to the United States, on the 25th of February, 1790, 
was made and accepted upon the express condition, that all the 
provisions of the Ordinance of 1787 should be extended to it with 
the exception of the 6th article. 

On the 24th of April, 1802, by articles of cession and agree- 
ment, Georgia ceded to the United States all her right to the 
jurisdiction and soil of the lands within the boundaries of the 
United States, south of the State of Tennessee, and west of the 
Catahouchee, upon conditions similar to those in the cession by 
North Carolina. Out of these two grants have arisen three Terri- 
torial Governments, all administered under the provisions of the 
great Ordinance, and out of these three Territories, three States 
have come into the Union, viz: — Tennessee, admitted on 1st 
June, 1796 ; Mississippi, on the 10th December, 1817, and Ala- 
bama, on the 14th December, 1819. In their Constitutions, and 
in the acts of admission, and in the two latter cases in the acts 
of Congress passed preparatory to their formation of State Go- 
vernments, the Ordinance of 1787 is distinctly recognized and 
made the basis of both Congressional and State action. 

It can therefore be truly and emphatically said that Tennessee, 
Mississippi, and Alabama are States by virtue of the Ordinance 
of 1787, and that they should be the very last in the Union to dis- 
pute the validity or constitutionality of this celebrated compact, 
to which they owe their independent existence as component 
members of the confederacy. 

On the 7th May, 1800, the Northwestern Territory was divided, 



17 

and a new Territory created called Indiana ; and on 3d February, 
1809, the Illinois Territory was also taken from Indiana. All 
these acts of Congress established governments in conformity to 
the Ordinance of 1787, and the act of the 7th August, 1789, and 
extended the privileges secured to the people of the Territory 
Northwest of the River Ohio, by the Ordinance, to the inhabi- 
tants of these respective Territories. 

The various acts enabling the people of Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois to form Constitutions and State Governments preparatory 
to admission into the Union — the Constitutions, thus formed, and 
the acts admitting them, recognized all the principles of the 
Ordinance in their fullest extent. 

Ohio was admitted into the Union on the 29th November, 1802, 
Indiana on the 11th December, 1816, and Illinois on the 3d 
December, 1818. By the Act of 19th April, 1816 (which is a 
type of the others), providing for the admission of Indiana, it is 
enacted that the Constitution and State Government, " whenever 
formed, shall be republican and not repugnant to those articles 
of the Ordinance of the 13th July, 1787, which are declared to 
be irrevocable between the original States and the people and 
States northwest of the River Ohio, excepting so much of the 
said articles as relate to the boundaries of the States therein 
formed." 

And by the preamble of the resolution of Congress, of the 11th 
December, 1816, admitting Indiana, it is expressly declared that 
the " Constitution and State Government so formed is Republi- 
can and in conformity with the principles of the articles of com- 
pact between the original States and the people and States in the 
Territory northwest of the River Ohio, passed on the thirteenth 
day of July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven." 

LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 

We are now to trace the Congressional history of the legisla- 
tion in relation to the Territory of Louisiana, purchased by Mr. 
Jefferson from France. 

By the act of the 31st October, 1803, all the military, civil, 
and judicial powers exercised by the officers of the existing 
government of Louisiana were temporarily vested in such persons, 

2 



18 

and to be exercised in such manner as the President should direct, 
for maintaining and protecting its inhabitants in the free enjoy- 
ment of their liberty, property, and religion, and by the act of 
the 26th, March, 1804, it was divided into two Territories, the 
southern part being called the Territory of Orleans, and the 
residue of the ceded province was named the District of Louis- 
iana. The Orleans Territory had a Governor, Secretary, Judges, 
and Legislative Council, whilst the District of Louisiana was to 
be governed by the Governor and the Judges of the Indiana 
Territory. The 7th section contained stringent provisions against 
the importation of slaves from other States, except under parti- 
cular restrictions, and all slaves imported contrary to this act 
were entitled to their freedom. 

On the 2d March, 1805, an act further providing for the go- 
vernment of the Territory of Orleans was passed, by which the 
President was authorized to establish within that Territory a 
government in all respects similar (except as thereinafter pro- 
vided) to that then exercised in the Mississippi Territory, and he 
was also to appoint all officers necessary therein, in conformity 
with the ordinance of Congress, made on the 13th day of July, 
1787, and the inhabitants of the Territory of Orleans were to be 
entitled to all the rights, privileges, and advantages secured by 
the said ordinance, and then enjoyed by the people of the Mis- 
sissippi Territory. 

So much of the said Ordinance of Congress as relates to the 
organization and powers of a General Assembly, were to be in 
force after the 4th of July, 1805, and it was provided that the 
second paragraph of the said Ordinance which regulates the 
descent and distribution of estates, and also the 6th article of 
Compact, which is annexed to and makes part of said Ordinance, 
were not to extend to, but were excluded from, all operation 
within the said Territory of Orleans. 

Whenever it should be ascertained by a census taken by the 
proper authority, that the number of free inhabitants amounted to 
sixty thousand, then they were authorized to form for themselves 
a Constitution and State government, and be admitted into the 
Union upon the footing of the original States, in all respects 
whatever, conformably to the provisions of the 3d article of the 



19 

Treaty concluded at Paris, on the 30th day of April, 1803, be- 
tween the United States and the French Republic ; provided, 
that the Constitution, so to be established, shall be republican, 
and not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, 
nor inconsistent with the Ordinance of the late Congress, passed 
the 13th day of July, 1787, so far as the same is made applicable 
to the Territorial Government thereby authorized to be established. 

On the 3d March, 1805, Congress passed another act, pro- 
viding for the government of the District of Louisiana, which 
changed its name to that of the Territory of Louisiana, vested 
the executive power in a governor and secretary, and appointed 
three judges, to whom and to the governor the legislative power 
was given. 

By an act, passed 20th February, 1811, the inhabitants of the 
Territory of Orleans, within the limits therein described, were 
authorized to form a State Constitution and Government, under 
the provisions and upon the conditions thereinafter mentioned. 
If the Constitution, so formed, was not disapproved of by Con- 
gress at their next session after its receipt, the State was to be 
admitted into the Union. The Constitution was so formed in 
pursuance of this act, and on the 8th of April, 1812, Louisiana 
was admitted into the Union upon the conditions expressed in 
that act and in the act of 1811. 

On the 4th June, 1812, Congress passed an act, providing for 
the government of the Territory of Missouri, by which the Ter- 
ritory heretofore called Louisiana was called Missouri, and was 
organized by vesting the executive power in a governor with a 
secretary and the legislative power in a General Assembly, consist- 
ing of the governor, a legislative council, and a house of repre- 
sentatives, and the citizens were authorized to elect a delegate 
from the said Territory to Congress. This act embodied some of 
the most important principles of the Ordinance of 1787. 

By an act, passed the second March, 1819, the southern part 
of the Missouri Territory was erected into a separate govern- 
ment, called Arkansaw. The executive power was vested in a 
governor with a secretary, the judicial in three judges, and the 
legislative in the governor and judges, until the organization of 
the General Assembly, which was to take place whenever the 



20 

governor was satisfied it was the wish of a majority of the free- 
holders, at which time they were also allowed to elect a delegate 
to Congress. By an act relative to the Arkansas Territory, 
passed the 21st of April, 1820, the act of the 4th June, above 
quoted, as modified by the act of the 29th of April, 1816, was to 
be considered as applicable to the government of the Territory of 
Arkansas, and to have reference to the proceedings of the said 
Territory in the organization of the second grade of the Territorial 
government, assumed by the said Territory, under the said act 
of 2d March, 1819. 

The narrative of the consistent and unvarying legislation by 
Congress, both in regard to the admission of States and the 
government of Territories, brings us to the Missouri question, 
which terminated in the celebrated Compromise, which pro-slavery 
politicians of the present day declare to be unconstitutional. 

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 

By the purchase of Louisiana we had acquired a claim to what 
was called Texas, and our western boundary in that quarter, 
between us and Spain, was unsettled and undefined. Spain 
owned the Floridas, which, by a resolution and acts passed in 
secret session in 1811 and 1812, but not published until 1818, 
Congress had determined should not pass into any other hands 
than our own. 

By the treaty of the 22d February, 1819, we acquired the 
Floridas, and ceded to Spain all our claims to territory lying 
south and west of a boundary line west of the Mississippi, be- 
ginning at the mouth of the Sabine River, in the Gulf of 
Mexico, and terminating on the parallel of 42° N. latitude in the 
South Sea, including in such cession the province of Texas. 

The people of the Missouri Territory applied to Congress in 
the winter of 1818-1819, for the passage of an act to enable them 
to form a Constitution and State government, preparatory to 
their admission into the Union as a State. Such an act passed 
the House of Representatives, but with a clause declaring that 
the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be 
prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes whereof the party 
shall have been duly convicted, and that all children of slaves 



21 

born within the said State after the admission thereof into the 
Union, shall be free, but may be held to service until the age 
of twenty-five years, which was, however, negatived in the 
Senate. 

Their application was renewed at the next session. In the 
meantime the three great States of New York, Pennsylvania, and 
Ohio, had unanimously remonstrated against the admission of 
Missouri, except with the restriction above-mentioned. The 
House adhered to its former determination, whilst the Senate 
was equally obstinate, and complicated the question by uniting 
the fate of Missouri with that of Maine, which, by the terms of 
the act of Massachusetts, must procure the assent of Congress 
before the 4th of March, 1820. In order, however, to induce 
some of the majority of the House to give way, the Senate 
passed what is now the 8th section of the act of 6th March, 
1820, prohibiting slavery in all the territory ceded under the 
name of Louisiana, north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes and 
north and west of the State of Missouri. After a very protracted 
struggle, the clause prohibiting slavery in the State was lost by a 
vote of 90 to 87, and the 8th section as it now stands was carried 
by an overwhelming majority. This forms what is called the 
Missouri Compromise. 

The whole real contest during the two sessions was in relation 
to the prohibition of slavery in the State. " On that occasion," 
says Judge Story, " the question was largely discussed whether 
Congress possessed a constitutional authority to impose such a 
restriction, upon the ground that the prescribing of such a con- 
dition is inconsistent with the sovereignty of the State to be ad- 
mitted, and its equality with the other States. The final result 
of the vote which authorized the erection of that State seems to 
establish the rightful authority of Congress to impose such a re- 
striction, although it was not then applied." 

This is strictly true, and there is no doubt that Missouri 
never would have been admitted except with this restriction or 
condition, but for the fact that the Senate connected it with the 
admission of Maine, which gave the advocates of Missouri the 
votes of the members from that district, as well as of those of 
several other New England Congressmen. 



22 

The vote on the prohibition of slavery in the Territory, in the 
8th Section, was in the Senate 34 to 10, and in the House 134 
to 42, and, deducting from the minority five votes, who believed 
Congress had the power, it made the House vote really 139 to 37, 
majorities showing the entire confidence of both bodies in the con- 
stitutionality, as well as the expediency of extending the benefits 
of the 6th Article of the Ordinance to the Territories west of the 
Mississippi. In pursuance of this act Missouri formed her con- 
stitution and asked for admission ; but she had, by a provision in 
it in relation to free negroes, created another ground of opposi- 
tion, which, after various reports and debates, was terminated by 
a resolution of the 2d of March, 1821, admitting Missouri into 
the Union upon the fundamental condition that this clause shall 
never be construed to authorize the passage of any law, and that 
no law shall be passed in conformity thereto, by which any citi- 
zen of either of the States in this Union shall be excluded from 
the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which 
such citizen is entitled under the Constitution of the United 
States, and upon the Legislature of Missouri declaring the assent 
of the State to this fundamental condition by a solemn public act, 
to be transmitted, on or before the fourth Monday in November, 
1821, to the President, who, upon its receipt, should by procla- 
mation announce the fact, whereupon and without any further 
proceeding on the part of Congress the admission should be con- 
sidered as complete. This condition was accepted by the act of 
the 26th of June, 1821, and on the 10th of August following the 
President issued his proclamation declaring the admission of Mis- 
souri complete according to law. 

General Washington, Mr. Adams, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, 
and Mr. Monroe had directly affirmed the constitutionality of 
the Ordinance by approving acts of Congress confirming or 
recognizing it, and by the performance of various executive func- 
tions devolved upon them by its provisions. In fact no President 
in the early stages of the government could hardly have passed 
a day without its being brought before him, directly or indirectly, 
in some way or other. Congress recognized its validity, and six 
States had been admitted into the Union by virtue and in pursu- 
ance of its provisions, and three of them within the original 



23 

Northwestern Territory, with articles against the existence of 
slavery within their limits, in conformity to the Ordinance and 
the acts of Congress enabling them to form their constitutions 
and State governments. 

The 8th section of the Missouri Act was a copy of the 6th 
article, and was simply extending its effect to uninhabited terri- 
tory which had neither slaves nor white freemen in it. Its inten- 
tion was to preserve the soil for a white homogeneous population, 
which the experience of our country has proved to be the best, 
the happiest, and the strongest. It took no man's property, and 
it injured no man. 

Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, Mr. Lowndes, of South Carolina, and 
every eminent man from the South, in the House of Representa- 
tives, were in favor of the 8th Section, as constitutional, fair, and 
just. Mr. Sergeant, and the Northern phalanx, of course be- 
lieved it constitutional, and voted for it when defeated in the re- 
striction upon the State of Missouri, and Judge Baldwin, who was 
opposed to the restriction on the State, went for the restriction 
on the territory as entirely constitutional. 

The votes in the Senate prove the same state of things there. 
There was, however, one great man, the most accomplished lawyer 
of his day, William Pinkney, of Maryland, whose deliberate 
opinion is exceedingly valuable. He had been elected to the 
Senate on the 23d December, 1819, and had accepted with a 
view to the great question of slave restriction. On the 21st 
January, 1820, he spoke three hours in favor of the admission 
of Missouri without restriction, without finishing his argument, 
and on the 24th resumed the remarks he commenced on Friday 
and spoke nearly two hours in conclusion. It was justly con- 
sidered one of his most brilliant efforts, but it was never reported, 
and we have only such parts of it as Mr. Wheaton was able to 
make out from Mr. Pinkney's notes. These are preserved and 
inserted in his life by Mr. "Wheaton. Mr. Wheaton, p. 612, 
says: "After going through with that part of his argument re- 
lating to this clause of the Constitution, which I have not been 
able to restore from the imperfect notes in my possession, Mr. 
Pinkney concluded his speech by expressing a hope that (what 
he deemed) the perilous principles urged by those in favor of the 



24 

restriction upon the new States would be disavowed or explained, 
or that at all events the application of them to the subject under 
discussion would not be pressed, but that it might be disposed of 
in a manner satisfactory to all by a prospective prohibition of 
slavery in the territory to the north and west of Missouri." 

This synopsis of the conclusion of his speech is shown to be 
perfectly correct by a letter of Mr. Pinkney to his son-in-law, 
Mr. Cumberland D. Williams, dated February, 1820. [Wheaton, 
p. 167.] "The bill," writes Mr. Pinkney, "for the admission 
of Missouri into the Union {without restriction as to slavery) may 
be considered as past. The bill was sent back again, this morn- 
ing, from the House, with the restriction as to slavery. The 
Senate voted to amend it by striking out the restriction (2T to 15), 
and proposed, a$ another amendment, which I have all along 
been an advocate of a restriction upon the vacant territory to the 
north and west as to slavery. To-night, the House of Represen- 
tatives have agreed to both of these amendments, in opposition to 
their former votes, and this affair is settled. To-morrow we shall, 
of course, recede from our amendments as to Maine (our object 
being effected), and both States mil be admitted. This happy 
result has been accomplished by the conference of which I was a 
member on the part of the Senate, and of which I prepared the 
report which has been made." 

On the 25th January, 1820, Mr. King, of New York, took his 
seat in the Senate, having been elected on the 8th January, and 
on the 11th of February spoke about two hours in support of the 
right and expediency of restricting the contemplated State of 
Missouri from permitting slavery therein, and yet the author of 
the second life of Mr. Pinkney (his nephew) speaks of Mr. Pink- 
ney's speech being an answer to Mr. King, and that Mr. King 
was so struck by it that he never replied to it. 

The Missouri bill having been presented to the President, Mr. 
Monroe, he requested the written opinions of his cabinet upon 
two questions. The first was whether Congress had the Consti- 
tutional right to prohibit slavery in a Territory ? The second 
was whether the eighth section of the Missouri bill was consistent 
with the Constitution ? The answers to both were unanimously 
in the affirmative. 



25 

The members of Mr. Monroe's cabinet were the most distin- 
guished statesmen and jurists of the day. Mr. Adams was 
Secretary of State, Mr. Crawford Secretary of the Treasury, 
Judge Thompson (afterwards of the Supreme Court of the United 
States) Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Wirt, of Virginia, a profound 
lawyer, Attorney-Greneral, and Mr. Calhoun Secretary of War, 
the latter having been elected a member of the House of Repre- 
sentatives during the war, and as such continued until his appoint- 
ment to the cabinet on the 8th October, 1817. 

These facts appear by the papers of Mr. Monroe, the Diary 
of Mr. Adams, and subsequent researches, and by the clear ad- 
missions of Mr. Calhoun, made in debate in the Senate, in 1838, 

Any reasonable man would have supposed that this decision, 
made with the assent of every Constitutional jurist and states- 
man in the country, was a final settlement of a question which 
would never again be disturbed so long as the Constitution itself 
was in existence. 

It became the uniform rule under every succeeding President, 
Mr. Adams, General Jackson, and Mr. Tyler ; the latter extend- 
ing it in the most liberal manner to the case of the annexation 
of Texas. 



TEXAS AND THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 

The treaty for the annexation of Texas having failed in the 
Senate, it was determined to effect the same object by a joint 
resolution of Congress. This was undoubtedly the scheme of 
Mr. Calhoun, who, as Secretary of State and the Southern 
leader, was the great master spirit. 

On the 25th January, 1845, a joint resolution for annexing 
Texas to the United States, upon terms similar to the rejected 
treaty which had been reported by Mr. C. J. Ingersoll, from the 
Committee on Foreign Affairs, with an amendment offered by Mr. 
Weller, and an amendment to the amendment, offered by Mr. 
Douglass, were under consideration in Committee of the Whole, 
and the hour fixed for the termination of the debate by the 
House having arrived, the committee proceeded to vote on them, 
and the several propositions subsequently offered. 



26 

The amendment of Mr. Douglass to the amendment of Mr. 
Weller, and various others offered by other gentlemen, were 
successively rejected, until Mr. Milton Brown, of Tennessee, sub- 
mitted an amendment to it, striking out the amendment of Mr. 
Weller, after the word "Resolved," and inserting what formed 
the real substance of the joint resolution as it passed both 
branches of Congress. 

The first section gave the consent of Congress to the erection 
of the Territory belonging to the Republic of Texas into a new 
State, to be called the State of Texas, with a republican form of 
government, in order that the same may be admitted as one of 
the States of this Union. 

The second section: "Hesolved, That the foregoing consent 
of Congress is given upon the following conditions, and with the 
following guarantees, to wit : 

" The third of which was in these words : 'New States of a 
convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to said 
State of Texas, and, having sufficient population, may hereafter, 
by the consent of said State, be formed out of the Territory 
thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions 
of the Federal Constitution ; and such States, as may be formed 
out of that portion of said Territory, lying south of 36° 30' north 
latitude, commonly known as the Missouri Compromise Line, 
shall be admitted into the Union with or without Slavery, as the 
people of each State asking admission may desire.' ' 

Mr. Douglass (of Illinois), asked the gentleman from Tennessee, 
to accept the following as a modification of his amendment, to 
come in after the last clause: "And in such State or States as 
shall be formed out of said Territory north of said Missouri Com- 
promise Line, slavery or involuntary servitude (except for crimes) 
shall be prohibited." 

Mr. M. Brown accepted the modification, and the amendment 
or substitute as modified, was adopted, and the resolution in this 
shape finally passed the House on the same day. 

In the Senate another section was added, allowing the Presi- 
dent, if he deemed it expedient, instead of submitting the fore- 
going resolution to the Republic of Texas, as an overture on the 
part of the United States for admission, to negotiate with that 



27 

Republic upon the terms set forth in another resolution. This 
was adopted by the Senate, and agreed to by the House, and the 
whole became a law on the 1st March, 1845. 

Mr. Buchanan (who was in a minority of one in the Committee 
of Foreign Relations on this subject), made a very able speech in 
their favor, approving of every part of them, and particularly 
of the Missouri Compromise line. Speaking of the Missouri 
Compromise itself, he said emphatically "Who could complain 
of the Compromise ? It was then settled that north of 36 deg. 
30 tain., slavery should be forever prohibited. The same 
line was fixed upon in the resolutions recently received from 
the House of Representatives now before us. The bill from 
the House for the establishment of a territorial government in 
Oregon, excluded slavery altogether from that vast country. How 
vain were the fears entertained in some quarters of the country 
that the slave-holding States would ever be able to control the 
Union!" 

Not, however, a vain fear at this day when we read the Cin- 
cinnati Platform, of indefinite slavery extension, rendering all 
the Territories of the United States slave territories by force of 
its heretical dogmas, and of course making all future States 
created out of them slave States ; and when we also find the elo- 
quent and able Senator selected by the Convention as the ex- 
ponent of these unconstitutional doctrines. 

It was supposed by those who were propitiated by the third sec- 
tion inserted in the Senate, giving the option to the President to 
negotiate, and whose aid was necessary to carry the joint reso- 
lution, that the choice of the alternatives would be left to Pre- 
sident Polk. Mr. Calhoun, however, determined to clinch the 
nail before his power expired, and, on the 3d of March, the last 
day of President Tyler's administration, he wrote a despatch to 
Mr. Donelson, instructing him, by the President's orders, to pre- 
sent to the government of Texas, as the basis of its admission, 
the proposals contained in the resolution as it came from the 
House of Representatives ; and, after discussing the feasibility 
of amendments by Texas, he says: "But it is deemed by the 
President of great importance that the resolution should be 
adopted without amendment." 

President Tyler, Mr. Calhoun, and all the other members of 



28 

the Cabinet, including Mr. Mason and that distinguished jurist 
John Nelson, of Maryland, then Attorney-General, approved and 
sanctioned the measure of applying the doctrine of the Missouri 
Compromise to the future admission of a State, to be carved out 
of slave territory, and within whose limits, as an indispensable 
condition, " slavery or involuntary servitude (except for crimes), 
shall be prohibited." 

The 8th Section of the Missouri Act of 1820, affirmed the 
power of Congress to prohibit slavery in the territories of the 
United States, the 3d condition of the 2d Section of the Texas 
joint resolution of 1845, distinctly affirmed the power of Congress 
to impose upon a State taken from slave territory, as a sine qua 
non, that slavery should be prohibited within its boundaries. 

Upon the accession of President Polk, Mr. Buchanan, as 
Secretary of State, writes on the 10th of March to Mr. Donelson, 
noticing the despatch of Mr. Calhoun of the 3d inst., and stating 
the proposition distinctly made in it to the Government of Texas, 
and then proceeds : " President Tyler having thus determined to 
adopt the two first of the series of resolutions, instead of the 
alternative presented by the third, it became the duty of the Pre- 
sident to devote his attention to this important question at as early 
a moment as possible. This has been done, and his deliberations 
have resulted in a clear and firm conviction that it would be in- 
expedient to reverse the decision of his predecessor." 

"The President prefers the two first resolutions, because they 
will, in his judgment, the most speedily and certainly secure the 
admission of Texas into the Union." 

"In every aspect in which the President has viewed this 
subject, he believes that the paramount question of admission can 
be best settled, and the just rights of Texas can be best secured, 
by her acceptance without qualification of the terms and condi- 
tions proposed by the first two resolutions, and he therefore con- 
fidently expects that you will exert your well-known ability and 
energy to secure this auspicious result by every honorable means 
within your power." 

On the 23d June, 1845, the existing government of Texas 
gave their consent to the provisions of the joint resolution of the 
American Congress for annexing Texas to the United States, 



29 

and a convention of delegates to form a State Constitution, to 
be held on the 4th July, 1845, was also sanctioned. 

This Convention met and passed an ordinance, on the 4th 
July, 1845, giving the assent of the people of Texas to the pro- 
posals, conditions, and guarantees contained in the first and 
second sections of the joint resolution of the Congress of the 
United States, as recited in said ordinance. This Convention, 
on the 27th August, adopted a Constitution, by the 13th section 
of the schedule to which, the aforesaid ordinance of the 4th July 
was attached, and formed a part of the same. The people of 
Texas, at the polls, accepted the terms of annexation and ratified 
the Constitution. 

By a joint resolution of the 29th December, 1845, reciting the 
joint resolution of the 1st March, and all the acts done by the 
government and people of Texas already stated, the State of 
Texas was admitted into the Union. 

President Polk carried out in full the plan adopted by Mr. 
Calhoun, and he and all his Cabinet, including Mr. Buchanan 
and Mr. Walker, who had advocated the measure in the Senate, 
fully approved and sanctioned the Constitutional power of Con- 
gress over slavery, so clearly asserted in the second section of 
this celebrated joint resolution. 

At the close of his Presidential career, President Polk, having 
on the 14th August, 1848, approved the Oregon bill, which, in 
its 14th section, contained an extension of the Ordinance of 1787 
to that Terrritory, sent a message to the House of Representa- 
tives, stating his reasons for signing it, in which he distinctly 
affirmed the constitutionality and expediency of the Texas and 
Missouri Compromises which I have just discussed. 

Of our acquisitions from Mexico : 

California was admitted into the Union as a free State. Terri- 
torial governments were formed for New Mexico and Utah, and 
the northern boundary of the State of Texas was settled with 
her consent. The legislation of 1850 was confined entirely to 
these Territories, and was not in any manner extended to the 
Territory covered by the 8th section of the act of 1820, nor did 
any man dream that it could be until it became necessary to find 
an excuse for making Kansas a slave State. 



30 

By the treaty with Spain of 1819, and the 8th section of the 
Missouri Act of 1820, the South got three slave States — Mis- 
souri, Arkansas, and Florida — comprising all the then territory 
"within the limits of the United States south of 36 deg. 30 min. 
with the exception of the territory reserved for the Indians. 
The benefit to the free States and their white freemen was pro- 
spective, and only one free State, Iowa, has been admitted out of 
the territory devoted to Freedom. The South have obtained 
six Senators, Freedom only two. 

After the accession of President Pierce, who owed his nomina- 
tion to Virginia and the slave States, the South were encouraged 
to attempt a destruction of the Compromise under the lead of 
the Senator from Illinois. It was, however, approached cau- 
tiously and warily, and with many backings and fillings on the 
part of the projectors and the Government organ. 

New Mexico and California were free by the law of nations, 
slavery being prohibited by the laws and constitution of Mexico, 
and, of course, would remain so until altered by an act of Con- 
gress. This was the opinion of Mr. Clay and all the eminent 
men in 1850. 

Small men carped at the doctrine, and the acts for the Terri- 
torial Governments of Utah and New Mexico did not decide it. 

The Missouri Compromise was fixed by an act of Congress, 
which must stand until repealed, for it was a clear absurdity to 
call it unconstitutional. The Committee on Territories, however, 
willing to escape from the odium of direct repeal, thought there 
was a resemblance between the two cases, and they accordingly 
said in their report to the Senate on the 4th January, 1854, 
" Your committee are not prepared now to recommend a departure 
from the course pursued on that memorable occasion, either by 
affirming or repealing the 8th section of the Missouri Act, or by 
any act declaratory of the meaning of the Constitution in re- 
spect to the legal points in dispute." 

The committee were, however, by the outside pressure, and 
the manly declaration of Mr. Dixon, of Kentucky, that he would 
move a direct repeal, forced at last into an indirect nullification 
of the 8th section, as it appears in the 32d section of the act to 
organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas. Mark the 
words : 



31 

" That the Constitution and all laws of the United States, which 
are not locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect 
within the said Territory of Kansas as elsewhere within the 
United States, except the eighth section of the act preparatory to 
the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March 6th, 
1820, which 'being inconsistent with the principle of non-inter- 
vention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories 
as recognized by the legislation of 1850, commonly called the 
Compromise measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void; 
it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate 
slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, 
but to leave .the people thereof perfectly free to form and regu- 
late their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to 
the Constitution of the United States. Provided, that nothing 
herein contained shall be construed to revive or put in force any 
law or regulation which may have existed prior to the act of 6th 
of March, 1820, either protecting, establishing, prohibiting, or 
abolishing slavery." 

It is perfectly clear from this clause, 1. That the Compromise 
measures of 1850 did not touch or in any manner reach the ter- 
ritory covered by the prohibition in the 8th section of the act of 
the 6th March, 1820. 2. That the Compromise of 1850, re- 
lated to new acquisitions, whilst the Compromise of 1820 related 
exclusively to territory then owned by the United States, and 
the subject of division at the time into slave and free territory 
by mutual agreement. 

3. That the reason assigned for declaring the 8th section in- 
operative and void is not founded in fact, for no sane man in 
1850 dreamed of affecting the Compromise of 1820, which stood 
on its own merits, and applied to entirely different territory, dif- 
ferently circumstanced, and on the faith of which Compromise 
the three slave States of Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida had 
been admitted into the Union. 

4. That the disclaimer of legislation looks exceedingly as if 
Congress thought they possessed the power to deal with slavery 
in the territory, particularly when they give authority to the 
people to act upon it. If the people of the territory derive 
their power from this section to admit or exclude slavery, then 



32 

Congress, who vest them with it, must undoubtedly have the 
same power, and can prohibit slavery whenever such is their 
pleasure. 

5. That the 8th section of the act of 1820, like the 6th 
Article of the Ordinance of 1787, and the last clause in the 
third condition of the second section of the joint resolution for 
annexing Texas to the United States, is constitutional. 

From the review of the Constitution and Territorial legisla- 
tion of the United States, it is abundantly certain that the 6th 
Article of the Ordinance of 1787, and the Missouri and Texas 
Compromises, which were but extensions of it, were clearly con- 
stitutional measures, and intended to work out the greatest good 
for the greatest number. 

From the earlier provisions have sprung the six great free 
States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and 
Iowa, which number no doubt at this hour as many white free 
inhabitants as the whole fifteen slave States put together. 

I should not have pursued the argument to this extent, if the 
Cincinnati Convention, in their platform, had not expressly de- 
clared that Congress had no power to interfere with slavery in the 
territories, or in the District of Columbia. I think I have shown 
conclusively that they have the power over slavery in the territories, 
and have exercised it from the commencement of the Government, 
and this is the real issue in this campaign. The power over slavery 
in the District of Columbia, I have never heard doubted by any 
sound jurist or statesman, and it is obvious to any one who will 
read the plain words of the Constitution. The Congress shall 
have power " to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases ivhat- 
soever, over such District;" and singular as it may appear to the 
members of the Cincinnati Convention, one of the celebrated 
compromise measures of 1850, was " an act to suppress the 
slave trade in the District of Columbia," which, under this new 
reading of the Constitution, should be instantly repealed. The 
expediency of further interference has been doubted by very 
able men, and as it is not one of the issues at the ensuing elec- 
tion, I dismiss it with these few observations. 

Both of these planks in the platform are rotten, and the can- 
didate who stands upon them, must fall to the ground. 



33 

I can say, therefore, with perfect freedom and entire truth, 
that this actual repeal of the Missouri Compromise by the 
Nebraska-Kansas Act, was a breach of national faith and viola- 
tion of national honor, which was rebuked by the people in 1854, 
and will be still more severely punished in 1856, when the crimes 
against Kansas and its unoffending free citizens have been made 
known to the whole civilized world in the most authentic form. 

KANSAS. 

The apparent plan of the Kansas Bill was to leave the people 
of the Territory perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic 
institutions in their own way. 

This clearly meant that this was not to be done by the people 
of Missouri, but by those who made the territory their home, and 
not a mere place of transit or temporary sojourn. There was 
another difficulty ; under the Constitution the slaveholder claims 
a right to enter any territory with his slaves, and assumes as a 
principle that all the territory of the United States is slave terri- 
tory, and that no territorial legislature can exclude him and his 
human chattels. The territory under this construction necessa- 
rily becomes slave territory, and therefore the other provision of 
the Kansas Bill, that when admitted as a State it shall be received 
into the Union with or without slavery as the Constitution may 
prescribe, is a mere nullity and an absolute farce, as a slave 
territory must always become a slave State. 

Into these difficulties has the criminal violation of a solemn 
compromise led the apparent friends, but real enemies, of popular 
sovereignty, and the practice under the organic laws of Kansas 
is the best proof of the soundness of the Constitutional doctrine 
of the supreme and exclusive power of Congress over the terri- 
tories in their territorial form. 

Who can protect an infant Territory and its citizens against 
the invasion of the hordes of an adjoining State but Congress ? 
The Territory, sparsely settled, cannot resist a foreign invasion, 
and a populous State can easily conquer and subdue its few in- 
habitants. 

Under such theories and practice every new Territory must 
belong to the next State, and becomes its prey ; and, instead of 

3 



34 

all the citizens of the thirty-one States having any lot or part in 
it, it must become the property of the one State which cuts it off 
from all communication with any others. 

Now this has been exactly the case of Kansas. The access to 
her is through the State of Missouri, and by the Missouri River. 
No free State man could travel with his family by land or water 
without being stopped, robbed of his property, his arms (if he had 
any) taken from him, and confiscated to the use of his plunderers ; 
and, if not tarred and feathered, or shot and scalped, turned back 
and directed to leave the State, and not to attempt to enter 
Kansas. In and out of Kansas unoffending men, Methodist 
ministers, members of the Society of Friends, merchants, trades- 
men, mechanics, and farmers, with their wives and families, have 
been exposed to all kinds of ill treatment because they preferred 
freedom to slavery, and wished Kansas to be a free Territory 
and a free State. For all these outrages and murders not one 
single individual has had any redress ; nor has one single guilty 
person ever been punished. 

It would be a dangerous matter for any one to complain of 
such acts to any tribunal or officer, either in Kansas or Missouri. 
This is no exaggerated picture, but is far below the truth. The 
policy of the Border Ruffian party has been to prevent all free 
white citizens, who were not devoted to slavery, from entering 
Kansas by any route, and if they reached the Territory to drive 
them out by threats of violence, or the application of a direct 
force, in its most dangerous form. 

I have examined with care the report of the committee of the 
House of Representatives, appointed to investigate the troubles 
in Kansas, and fully agree with them in the facts and conclu- 
sions which they regard as established by the testimony. 

They are to be found at page 67 of the Report, No. 200, 34th 
Congress, 1st session, House of Representatives. Amongst them 
are: " First, that each election in the Territory, held under the 
organic or alleged Territorial law, has been carried by organized 
invasion from the State of Missouri, by which the people of the 
Territory have been prevented from exercising the rights secured 
to them by the organic law." 

" Second, That the alleged Territorial legislature was an 



35 

illegally constituted body, and had no power to pass valid laws, 
and their enactments are therefore null and void." 

" Third, That these alleged laws have not been, as a general 
thing, used to protect persons and property, and to punish wrong, 
but for unlawful purposes." 

The election for members of the Territorial legislature was 
held on the 30th March, 1855, and it is proved by incontestable 
evidence, that, by an organized movement which extended over 
a large portion of the border counties of Missouri, companies of 
men were arranged and sent into every council district in the 
Territory, and into every Representative district but one, and 
the numbers were so distributed as to control the election in each 
district. They went to vote, and w r ith the avowed design to make 
Kansas a Slave State, and were generally armed and equipped, 
and carried with them their own provisions. They succeeded by 
force, fraud, intimidation, and violence, and returned pro-slavery 
members of the Territorial legislature, elected by citizens of the 
State of Missouri, who, to the number of nearly five thousand, 
had voted in the several election districts. 

It was, in fact, a Missouri, not a Kansas, election, and the 
legislature was a Missouri, and not a Kansas one. 

A parallel to such an outrage could only be found in supposing 
that we should send twenty thousand armed men into the State 
of Delaware, who should take possession of the polls, elect a 
governor, a legislature, and all the State and county officers, and 
then ask the people to submit to cruel and infamous laws passed 
by this spurious legislative body, and the whole should be recog- 
nized by the President of the United States as the regular 
government of Delaware, and all opposition to it put down by 
the army of the United States. 

These pretended laws of Kansas are, for the most part, tran- 
scripts, of the Missouri laws, from the Digest of 1845, and form 
additional evidence of its being solely a Missouri legislature. 

These laws assume, that Slavery exists in Kansas. There is 
no act establishing Slavery, or declaring human beings to be 
property, but all the enactments proceed upon the principle, that 
by the Nebraska-Kansas act and the Constitution of the United 
States, this is one of the original domestic institutions of the 



36 

Territory. According to this doctrine, it was Slave territory 
before any legislature was elected, or any governor or judges 
were appointed. 

Thus, in the first section of the act (ch. 151) to punish offences 
against slave property, it was enacted, " That every person, bond 
or free, who shall be convicted of actually raising a rebellion or 
insurrection of slaves, free negroes, or mulattoes, in this Territory, 
shall suffer death ;" which means, that the citizen, who believes 
this to be a free Territory, is to be hung. 

" Sect. 12. If any free person, by speaking or by writing, 
assert or maintain that persons have not the right to hold slaves 
in this Territory, or shall introduce into this Territory, print, 
publish, write, circulate, or cause to be introduced into this Ter- 
ritory, written, printed, published, or circulated in this Territory, 
any book, paper, magazine, pamphlet, or circular containing any 
denial of the right of persons to hold slaves in this Territory, 
such person shall be deemed guilty of felony, and punished by im- 
prisonment at hard labor for a term of not less than two years." 

This is clearly on a par with Mr. Sherwood in Texas being 
prohibited by a public meeting from addressing his constituents 
in defence of his course in the Legislature, unless he omitted all 
allusions to slavery, his offence being that he had asserted the 
power of Congress to prohibit slavery in the Territories, in other 
words, to pass the Missouri Compromise Act ; or with Mr. Un- 
derwood, being exiled from his home in Virginia because he was 
a member of the Republican Convention in this city; or with the 
two honest Irishmen, Malone and Colwell, being sent away from 
South Carolina and advertised like runaway slaves, or criminals 
escaped from the penitentiary, because one of them said he was 
in favor of Free Kansas ; with the expulsion of the booksellers 
from Mobile, and the outrages upon free speech at Wheeling and 
Baltimore ; and the still greater outrage upon the freedom of 
debate by the brutal attack upon Mr. Sumner, which has dis- 
graced the country in the eyes of the whole civilized world. 

But there is still another section, under which any conscien- 
tious free State man, who even hands to his neighbor this speech 
or any other harangue delivered in the free States upon the 
coming elections, may be visited with a much severer punishment, 



37 

for it is only pro-slavery juries and judges who can try him by 
the laws of Kansas. 

"Sect. 11. If any person print, write, introduce into, publish, 
or circulate, or cause to be brought into, printed, written, pub- 
lished or circulated, or shall knowingly aid or assist in bringing 
into, printing, publishing, or circulating within this Territory 
any book, paper, pamphlet, magazine, hand-bill, or circular, con- 
taining any statements, arguments, opinions, sentiments, doc- 
trine, advice or innuendo, calculated to produce a disorderly, 
dangerous or rebellious disaffection among the slaves in this Ter- 
ritory, or to induce such slaves to escape from the service of their 
masters or to resist their authority, he shall be guilty of felony 
and be punished by imprisonment and hard labor for a term of not 
less than five years." 

From these enactments it is certain that a speech in favor of 
Fremont in Kansas would place the speaker in the penitentiary, 
or rather condemn him to the ball and chain. 

Under such laws no man could advocate any candidate upon 
the ground either that he was opposed to slavery in Kansas and 
would so vote in the Legislature, or if in a convention to form a 
State government, would vote for the prohibition of slavery in 
the constitution. These laws, in fact, nullify all the provisions 
of the organic law. 

The provisions as to attorneys-at-law, jurors, and voters are 
all intended, by prescribing oaths which cannot be taken by free 
State men, to throw the whole power of the legislative and judi- 
cial branches of Government into the hands of pro-slavery men 
of the Border-ruffian stamp, which, with the appointments by the 
executive at Washington, give the whole power in Kansas to the 
Missouri invaders. 

No matter, therefore, what may be the majority of free State 
men in Kansas, under such laws they are powerless. 

There is every reason, therefore, that being null and void, these 
laws should be nullified forever by a change in the administration 
at Washington, which can be done by a united effort of the friends 
of freedom in Pennsylvania in favor of Fremont and Dayton. 

These crimes in Kansas and Missouri, the acts of fraud and 
violence committed by the Border Ruffians in both, the acts I 



38 

have already enumerated, and not the least the killing of the inno- 
cent and unoffending Keating ; not one of which crimes have ever 
been, or ever will be, punished by the authorities in the slave States, 
can only be accounted for by the deliberate opinion of Thomas Jef- 
ferson of the dreadful effect of slavery upon the masters. "There 
must doubtless be," said this eminent patriot, " an unhappy influ- 
ence on the manners of our people, produced by the existence of 
slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and 
slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the 
most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading sub- 
missions on the other. Our children see this and learn to imitate 
it ; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of 
all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning 
to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive 
either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the in- 
temperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a 
sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not 
sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the 
lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller 
slaves, gives a loose to Ms worst of passions, and thus nursed-, 
educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped 
by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who 
can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circum- 
stances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded 
who, permitting one-half of the citizens thus to trample on the 
rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into 
enemies, destroys the morals of the one part and the amor patriot 
of the other !" 

After perusing this painful picture by the author of the im- 
mortal Declaration of Independence, what true-hearted son of 
Pennsylvania can refuse to vote for free Kansas. 

The judicial department in Kansas appears to be on a level 
with the Legislature, if the accounts of the charges and decisions 
of the Judges be correct. It was supposed that the Treason 
Trials in Philadelphia had disposed of the whole doctrine of con- 
structive treason, by showing that the English decisions in 
Messenger, and Damaree and Purchase's cases were not re- 
garded as good law, even in England, the first being the miser- 



39 

able opinion of one of the most contemptible judges that ever 
disgraced the bench of a court of justice, and the other being 
founded upon it. 

It appears, however, that the Chief Justice of Kansas believes 
in constructive treason, and that it consists, in his opinion, in an 
opposition to the Territorial laws, which being passed under the 
Nebraska-Kansas Act by the Territorial Legislature, he says 
become laws of the United States, and, therefore, it is treason 
against the United States ! 

This is upon a par with the Grand Jury of his Court finding a 
printing-press and hotel, in Lawrence, nuisances, and their abate- 
ment in consequence of these findings, by the officers of justice, 
at the head of a body of armed ruffians, cannonading and burn- 
ing the one, and destroying the other. 

If General Jackson had been President instead of General 
Pierce, not one of these crimes against Kansas would have been 
committed, the Missouri Compromise would never have been re- 
pealed, the Border Ruffians never would have invaded and taken 
military possession of the Territory, nor would the access by the 
great highway of the Missouri have been closed against the free 
citizens of the free States for a single hour. Every man who 
hears me knows and feels this to be true. His name alone would 
have awed the fiercest spirits into submission to the majesty of 
the law. 

CUBA AND THE OSTEND MANIFESTO. 

I spent some weeks in Cuba, this spring, for the benefit of the 
health of a near relative, who required the change to a milder 
climate. Our party, none of whom spoke the Spanish language, 
after staying some days in the picturesque City of Havana, crossed 
to the south side, and remained for some time on one of the finest 
sugar plantations in the island, belonging to a friend. During 
our whole visit we found the authorities of the island very friendly, 
and particularly attentive to Americans, whilst we were received 
and treated by all the inhabitants we saw in the course of our 
travels, with a politeness, kindness, and courtesy peculiar to the 
Spanish nation. 

I am unable, therefore, to appreciate the morality or justice of 



40 

taking Cuba by force if Spain will not sell it, and to look with 
coolness on the devastation and ruin which must await this de- 
lightful island and its inhabitants if invaded by the army and 
navy of the United States. 

It was to be hoped that the celebrated Ostend manifesto would 
have sunk into oblivion ; but as it has been made one of the 
planks of the Cincinnati platform, by language which will be in- 
terpreted to suit the occasion, it is but proper and right to ex- 
press our disapprobation of the doctrines and principles contained 
in it. 

The almost fabulous sum which has been offered for the Island, 
could be much better applied to the construction of the great 
railroad to the Pacific, which will be carried through Kansas if 
free, and which will give us a certain and swift line of communi- 
cation within our own Territories between the two oceans without 
embroiling ourselves with foreign nations. 

FREE WHITE LABOR. 

I should not have said another word on the evils of slavery 
except for the constant and unremitting attacks of Southern poli- 
ticians and of the Southern press supporting the Cincinnati plat- 
form and its nominees, upon the free white citizens of the North, 
with their wives and families, who live by the honest labor of 
their own hands. 

Slavery is declared to be a patriarchal institution necessary 
for the advancement of the human race, and that it includes from 
necessity both whites and blacks. " The South maintains that 
slavery is right, natural, and necessary, and does not depend 
upon difference of complexion. The laws of the slave States 
justify the holding of white men in bondage." — Richmond En- 
quirer. 

" Slavery is the natural and normal condition of the laboring 
man, whether white or black. The great evil of Northern society 
is that it is burdened with a servile class of mechanics and la- 
borers, unfit for self-government, and yet clothed with the attri- 
butes and powers of citizens." 

" "We have got to hating everything with the prefix free, from 



41 

free negroes down and through the whole catalogue ; free farms, 
free labor, free society, free will, free thinking, free children, 
and free schools, all belonging to the same brood of damnable 
isms. — (South-Side Democrat.) 

" Free Society ! We sicken of the name. What is it but a 
conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small- 
fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists." — (Muscogee Herald.) 

These are true extracts from the Southern papers, all advocat- 
ing the Cincinnati Platform, and exhibiting the real views of the 
Southern apostles, who are wandering through our State to teach 
the people of Pennsylvania to prefer Slavery to Freedom, to pre- 
fer being " owned," instead of being hired. 

In the Southern States there are upwards of three millions of 
people, without the divine institution of marriage, who have nei- 
ther wives, husbands, nor children, except as the foal follows the 
mare. All, from infancy to old age, without distinction of sex, 
or even of color (for the shades are from black to white), are lia- 
ble to whipping — cruel and immoderate whipping — in private by 
their masters, provided, it does not affect life or limb. The infant 
may be separated from its mother, and sold into distant slavery, 
at the will or caprice of the master, or by the iron hand of the 
law. Three millions of souls in a Christian land, whether slave 
or free, are forbidden to learn to read or write, and, of course, 
forbidden to read the Bible ; whilst free white women are punished 
with fine and imprisonment for doing what, on the coast of Africa, 
would be considered the chief end of missionary labor. The vices 
and degradation of Slavery need no enumeration ; and their effect 
on the white races has been graphically portrayed by Colonel 
Mason, of Virginia. " Christians," says a Southern Judge, "how 
can we justify it, that a slave is not to be allowed to read the 
Bible?" 

In the South, no large cities call for free white mechanical or 
other labor, and the interior is virtually closed to all free white 
labor by the wealthy slave-owner, who employs only his white 
overseers and his black slaves, whether in the labor of the field, 
the house, the shop, and even in the manufactory. 

In a Southern State all free white male (and in some places 
female) inhabitants are liable to do patrol duty, that is, to watch 



42 

over the slaves of their rich neighbors, and they are called out 
at least once a fortnight, and may correct, with stripes, all slaves 
infringing the slave regulations in the slightest particular. 

Does any free white man, with his family and their labor, think 
of going to South Carolina, the headquarters of Southern Slav- 
ery ? If this be so, why should such a system be tolerated for a 
moment in territory now free, and thus exclude the native Penn- 
sylvanian, or the hardy emigrant from Europe, from settling in 
the far West. The introduction of Slavery is the permanent ex- 
clusion of white freemen and free white labor. 

I have not thought it worth while to paint the true state of 
society in the North, with its manifold blessings, for they are 
known and felt by all of us. So great are our improvements, 
that I was assured by a gentleman, intimately acquainted with 
both the North and the South, that the respectable mechanics of 
Philadelphia had better accommodations, and enjoyed in fact more 
real comforts, than the Georgia planter did on his plantation. 

THE LEGISLATURE OF PENNSYLVANIA IN FAVOR OF FREEDOM. 

In the year 1819, Mr. Buchanan was one of a committee 
who reported resolutions to a meeting, held at Lancaster, re- 
questing their representatives in Congress to use their utmost 
endeavors to prevent the existence of slavery in any of the Ter- 
ritories or States which may be erected by Congress. In the 
same year were passed unanimously by the Legislature, the cele- 
brated preamble and resolutions, offered by Mr. W. J. Duane, 
against the admission of Missouri as a slave State. They were 
signed by Governor Findlay, and spoke the sentiments of the 
whole State. 

On the 23d January, 1829, a resolution was passed unani- 
mously in the Senate, and by a vote of 81 to 8 in the House, 
" That the Senators of this State, in the Senate of the United 
States, be and they are hereby instructed, and the Representa- 
tives of this State in Congress be and they are hereby requested 
to procure, if practicable, the passage of a law to abolish slavery 
in the District of Columbia, in such a manner as they may con- 
sider consistent with the rights of individuals and the Constitu- 
tion of the United States." 



43 

It was signed by the present Treasurer of the Mint, as Speaker 
of the Senate, and approved by Governor Shulze, and it was 
voted for in the Senate and the House by two gentlemen who 
were afterwards members of Governor Shunk's Cabinet. 

On the 22d January, 1847, a resolution, offered by a Demo- 
cratic member, passed the House unanimously and the Senate 
with only three dissentients, requesting our Senators and Re- 
presentatives to vote against any measure by which territories 
may accrue to the Union, unless, as part of the fundamental law 
upon which any compact or treaty for this purpose is based, 
slavery or involuntary servitude, except for crime, shall be 
forever prohibited. This met the approbation of Governor 
Shunk. 

On the 3d of March, 1847, an Act was passed and approved 
by Governor Shunk, abolishing the last remnant of slavery within 
our own limits, so that every man, except a fugitive from labor, 
upon touching the soil of Pennsylvania became a free man. 

Mr. Buchanan wrote a letter to the Democratic citizens of 
Reading, at their celebration on the 4th of July, 1847, recom- 
mending the Missouri Compromise Line. 

On the 4th of July, 1849, a resolution was passed unanimously 
at the Democratic State Convention, held at Pittsburg, against 
the extension of slavery to the territories, and its nominee for 
Canal Commissioner, Mr. Gamble, wrote a letter recognizing, in 
the strongest terms, the power of Congress to prohibit slavery in 
the territories, and the propriety of doing so. Mr. Gamble was 
elected by a large majority. 

THE PLATFORMS. 

Of late years the South have adopted the policy of nominat- 
ing Northern men with Southern principles, and to them has 
virtually been given the privilege of selecting the candidate, 
and announcing the principles upon which his administration is 
to be conducted. 

Thus, though in a decided minority, by always acting as an 
united force, they have secured to themselves the whole power 
of shaping the policy of the government. 



44 

The South itself, against its will, is governed by a small body 
of slaveholders, who, founding their power upon their ownership 
of human beings, are constantly engaged in plans to enlarge the 
area of slavery so as to afford a larger market for their human 
chattels. The effect of this is to place the government in the 
possession of a privileged class, a sort of slave nobility, and 
the President becomes a puppet in the hands of irresponsible and 
interested advisers, who force him into measures which his better 
nature would shrink from. 

As their policy has prospered so has their audacity increased, 
until at last, at Cincinnati, it is developed in a form which will 
leave little more to be done in favor of slavery by the next Con- 
vention, which meets at Charleston, the hot-bed of Southern slave 
fanaticism. 

The Cincinnati Platform, in plain words, negatives all power 
in Congress over slavery in the Territories, and, as a corollary, 
refuses it to the people of the Territory, who cannot have what 
Congress has not, and which, of course, it cannot delegate to 
another. The result is the adoption of the new-fangled Southern 
theory, spun out of the brains of men who profess to believe slavery 
to be a divine institution, intended for the benefit of man in his 
most progressive state, that any slaveholder has a right to take 
his slaves into any of the Territories of the United States, and 
to hold them there as he would in the State from which he emi- 
grated. The effect of this monstrous doctrine is to change all 
the territory of the United States, whether Oregon, Washington, 
Minnesota, New Mexico, Utah, Kansas or Nebraska into slave 
territory. 

The effect of this would be to surrender 842,119,040 acres to 
to 347,225 slaveholders, and to exclude the remaining 19,205,843 
free white inhabitants of the United States from all enjoyment of 
them, or any participation in their government, and finally to erect 
them into an indefinite number of slave States. 

The Convention at Charleston, in 1860, can only add to this 
degradation of free white men and free white labor, and the entire 
prostration of free speech and of a free press; the rc-cstablish- 
ment of the African slave trade, which we have denounced in the 
face of the civilized world as a crime against the law of nature 

LOFC, 



45 

and abhorrent to humanity, stigmatized it as piracy, and punished 
it with death. There is, however, one thing further, which the 
slaveholders have already practically asserted, and which may 
be and no doubt will be, inserted in the Charleston platform, their 
inherent right to carry into and hold their slaves in the free 
States against the express prohibitions of their constitutions and 
their laws. 

These Southern heresies thus publicly announced by regular 
Conventions of the party, if not resisted and put down at the 
outset, not only enter into the policy of the Executive Govern- 
ment, but finally make their appearance in the judicial decisions 
of the country. In the Southern States, where all the judges 
are slaveholders, the original line of decision, which in conformity 
with the common law was always in favor of freedom and against 
slavery, has been entirely reversed, and the contrary rule is now 
firmly established. 

These dogmas thus made law, by interested and prejudiced 
Courts, are finally used in the highest tribunal of the nation as 
binding authorities, although contrary to all the received doc- 
trines of the Common Law, and the old established principles of 
American Liberty. In fine, the result and the true object of the 
Cincinnati Platform is to make Kansas a slave State. 

Upon this Pro-Slavery Platform stand its nominees, James 
Buchanan and John C. Breckinridge, the latter gentleman agree- 
ing in opinion and feeling with all its doctrines, and the first 
bound to carry them out to their fullest extent by his unqualified 
acceptance of the nomination and of the principles upon which it 
Was made. 

Of the three proposed candidates of the Democratic party I 
preferred Mr. Buchanan, and if he had been placed before the 
country upon principles which I could have approved, he would 
undoubtedly have received my vote at the ensuing Presidential 
election. 

But the platform on which he stands renders it impossible for 
me to vote for him, and I am therefore obliged to look for my 
candidate in some other quarter. 

I have carefully studied the Republican platform, and its prin- 
ciples meet my most cordial approbation. I disapprove of poly- 



46 

gamy in Utah as I do of slavery in Kansas, for both are against 
the natural and revealed law, the one in alloAving a man to have 
forty wives, and the other in not permitting him to have any at 
all. I am against seizing Cuba under any pretence whatever, 
and in favor of devoting the money intended for the purchase of 
a slave colony and a slave State to the erection of the great Pa- 
cific Railroad, terminating on the shores of the western ocean. 

I am in favor of the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, 
of Kansas being a free territory and a free State ; and to obtain 
all these great objects, I have no other option left than to vote 
for John Charles Fremont of California, and William L. Dayton 
of New Jersey, as President and Vice-President of the United 
States. 

Colonel Fremont is in the prime of life and near the same age 
as General Washington was, when he accepted the command of 
the American armies and surprised the British at Trenton, one 
of his most brilliant exploits. 

Colonel Fremont is a man of great natural sagacity, and pos- 
sesses a calm, clear judgment, improved by study and a large ex- 
perience of human nature in all its forms, whether of savage or 
civilized life. He is unassuming in his manners, with a striking 
personal appearance and a remarkably fine eye, strongly indi- 
cative of a prominent feature in his character, — a firm and vigo- 
rous will. 

His administration will bring back those good old days when 
the incumbent of the White House was the actual President, and 
governed his Cabinet as well as the people of America. 

William L. Dayton is the ablest lawyer of his native State, dis- 
tinguished as it always has been for its eminent jurists, and in 
the Senate of the United States was conspicuous for his talents, 
his eloquence, and his statesmanlike views. He is dignified and 
courteous in his bearing, and will make an admirable presiding 
officer in the Senate of the Union. 

What then, fellow-citizens, are we to do, who are in favor of 
Free Kansas and Free Territory and Free Labor at the coming 
election ? 

There can be but one answer, to vote for 

FREMONT AND DAYTON. 



OCT 9 1905 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



II 

022 021 594 5 



